


XV. Batter Up!

by BubblyWashingMachine



Series: Every Little Hurt Counts [febuwhump 2021] [15]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: BAMF Number Five | The Boy, Beating, Beating to Death, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, FebuWhump2021, Febuwhump, Gen, Good Intentions, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, Post-Season/Series 02, Violence, febuwhumpday15, five goes apeshit, idk what to even call this, run and don't look back, the prompt is, ummm - Freeform, well sorta...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:53:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29462307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BubblyWashingMachine/pseuds/BubblyWashingMachine
Summary: The man takes a step forward, smiling, and when he opens his mouth to speak, a baseball bat comes cracking down on the back of his skull.He staggers, the smile dropping, and Five hits him again – crack! – and this time he falls, sprawling out face-down onto the gaudy motel carpet.“I thought I told you,” Five repeats to Allison, in a low snarl, standing over the man in the doorway with the baseball bat held in both hands, “to run.”…Set after season two. Five pulverizes someone – who may or may not deserve it. Allison bears witness, and has conflicting feelings about this.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Allison Hargreeves
Series: Every Little Hurt Counts [febuwhump 2021] [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2137428
Comments: 10
Kudos: 109





	XV. Batter Up!

**Author's Note:**

> Hello friends! This one is good, I like it. Warning: it’s very gory, though. Like: very gross!!! or maybe I'm just sensitive?
> 
> Anyway. Another post-season 2 thing except!!! This time we are not ignoring the sparrows like I normally do! We are addressing that… head on. 
> 
> Enjoy Five literally murdering someone! I won't spoil who it is but... um... it doesn't really matter. they're Very dead now
> 
> Title is from, like. the song. for obvious reasons
> 
> Do I have, like... issues?? Why did I write this?? it's so gross and I'm so sorry to the character I killed omg (it's NOT any of the siblings). Sorry. I might be having a crisis. Maybe I has some underlying anger today that I decided to take out on a poor random character. hmm away. enjoy

When the Hargreeves split up, they all knew it was a temporary solution.

Allison was aware, because she believes she is a realistic person, that the Sparrow Academy would, eventually, hunt them down. But it had been nice to pretend for a while that they were safe. Klaus and Allison have been reconnecting over their respective lost loves, and in many ways, it’s just like old times. A fun charade, a distraction. Doing each other’s nails, braiding each other’s hair, and arguing with Five.

Allison used to understand Five. Or, at least, she liked to think she did – they weren’t friends, but they were both always the quickest, the brightest, the most cutting with words. And although they are perhaps both still all those things, Allison knows she doesn’t quite understand him anymore. Not like Luther or Vanya seem to, anyway.

She is sitting on the edge of her bed – the room only has two, so she shares with Klaus, despite Five being the smallest – and flipping through channels on the TV. She isn’t really paying attention. Out of the corner of her eye, Five kicks his legs absent-mindedly through the air.

_Claire used to do that._ The thought hits her like a kick to the stomach.

“Uh, guys?”

Klaus comes bursting into their little room, a towel wrapped around his waist. Allison shrieks and throws a hand up to shield her eyes, half-joking – _what the hell, Klaus_. Five, looking up from where he’s laying on the bed and scribbling in a notebook – Allison’s firmly told him that writing on the motel room’s walls is not allowed – scowls, and snaps, “What?”

“Sparrow’s coming,” Klaus says breathlessly. Suddenly it’s not funny. “Like, right now. Like, in the building, downstairs, now.”

“I thought you were in the shower!” Allison exclaims.

“I was, and then I wanted chips so I went to the vending machine in the hall and—"

“Klaus, shut up.” Five leaps up and starts shoving their things into the suitcase they have. “Shit,” he mutters. “You’re sure?”

“Sure as sure is sure,” Klaus rambles, high-pitched. “Couldn’t be surer.”

Allison gets up too, feeling lost. She flicks off the TV. “Klaus, how do you _know_? Did you _see_ him?”

He taps the side of his head. “Early warning detection system.”

“What?”

“Our incoming friend’s got _quite_ the entourage,” Klaus clarifies, bitterly. “And they’re currently swarming the building.”

Allison understands.

“The window,” Five barks, shoving the suitcase in Allison’s hands and one of her dresses into Klaus’. She thinks mournfully about all her beauty products in the bathroom that she’ll have to replace. This is the first time one of their hideouts has been discovered – she has a bad feeling that it won’t be the last. She longs for the safety of her house with Ray, or even Patrick. “Start climbing.”

“Wait, wait,” Klaus says, pulling the dress over his head and then tripping over the towel while Five practically pushes them out the window. Allison shoves it open as far as it will go, and looks worriedly at the tree outside – will it be able to hold their weight? “What about you?”

He ignores them, in typical Five fashion. “When you reach the ground, _run_ ,” Five says darkly, not shifting his eyes from the motel room door. He blinks to the opposite side of the window, and picks up the baseball bat that Klaus has been keeping in the corner as a joke _–_ _for emergencies_ – and swings it lightly, with consideration, as if testing the feel of it in his hands. “And don’t look back.”

Allison won’t accept that. She didn’t like them splitting up in the first place – this is a stupid idea. “What? _No,_ Five—"

“I’ll catch up. Use the burner and warn the others, then destroy it.”

Klaus shakes his head wildly, wet hair slapping him in the face. “Now hold on for—"

“We’re not going to just _leave_ you!” Allison cries. “We need to stick together!” Five looks at her and rolls his eyes with exasperation – and he’s right, they’ve already divided up. She doesn’t know where Diego, Luther, and Vanya are, and he won’t tell her. In case she’s compromised, or something – one of the Sparrows has some mind-tricks of his own apparently.

“You _don’t_ have a _choice_ ,” he says condescendingly, and she hates that he’s right. He hefts the bat up to his shoulder, looking ridiculous, but also terrifying. “I thought I told you—”

The door explodes in a shower of splinters and sparks, shards of wood scattering across the carpet.

In the doorway, haloed by the hallway light, stands Marcus. Number One.

They know what his power is – they’ve done a lot of research. Magazines, TV interviews, posters with his face and that horrible glowing visor across his eyes plastered across the city – yeah, they know him. And thanks to Reginald, he knows them too.

Allison backs away. Her power won’t be much use on this guy – she has a feeling he wouldn’t even give her the chance to open her mouth before blasting her face off. She glances to Five, hoping he has a plan – but he’s gone. Klaus stares at her, wide eyed.

Marcus takes a step forward, smiling, and when he opens his mouth to speak, a baseball bat comes cracking down on the back of his skull.

He staggers, the smile dropping, and Five hits him again – _crack!_ – and this time he falls, sprawling out face-down onto the gaudy carpet.

“I _thought_ I told you,” Five repeats, in a low snarl, standing over the man in the doorway with the baseball bat held in both hands, “to _run._ ”

Klaus runs. He scrambles onto the windowsill and grabs the branches of the tree outside, clinging like a squirrel, pale, skinny legs dangling ridiculously, and shimmies down. Allison turns back to Five.

“What are you going to do?” She asks, knowing the answer and stalling anyway.

From the floor, Marcus groans.

Five glances at her, twirling the bat. He looks far more dangerous, she thinks, than the other man did. “What do you _think_?”

She swallows, and tries to be a moral guide. Someone in this family has to be. “Is that – right?” It’s hardly a fair fight.

Five smiles briefly at her – patronizingly, like the old, grim man he is. Surely, he’s thinking of when Allison forced the Swede to murder his brother, and thinking that she’s a hypocrite. And perhaps he’s right – but Five, whatever he’s thinking, doesn’t say it aloud. He holds the bat over his head and says, distractedly, “Really, what does that have to do with anything? Don’t watch.”

“But…” Her voice comes out weak, and she trails off.

At that moment, Marcus begins to stir, grunting in pain, as if he is about to try and get up; Allison jolts back instinctively. “Five, he’s—"

“I know, Allison. Just go.” Five doesn’t wait, and swings the bat down with all the force in his tiny child body.

There is a disgusting, wet, _crunch_. Allison flinches away, gagging, but she forces herself to stay. This is their life now. This, she knows, is who Five is, and it won’t do anyone any good to forget it. She has a strong stomach. She’s seen worse, she’s pretty sure.

Marcus makes a horrible gurgling noise in the back of his throat, the wound on his head glistening and wet. His arm twitches helplessly.

The windowsill digs into her spine and she realises she’s backing away.

Without hesitation, his face carefully blank, Five brings the bat down again,

and again,

and again,

and again, long after Marcus has stopped moving,

and again, never missing the mark once,

and again, until there’s no solid matter left for him to hit, only jelly,

and again,

and again,

and again. Until all that’s left of Marcus’ head is a crimson puddle on the carpet and chunks of gore and white bone and hair splattered in arcs of blood across the walls. And his visor, now broken into several pieces.

Five pulls a face and, apparently satisfied, lets the baseball bat drop from his hand; it hits the carpet with a muted _thunk_ , and Allison’s eyes, unfocused, follow its movement until it rolls to a stop next to one of Marcus’ dislodged eyeballs. Five frowns at his bloodied hands and wipes them on his pants, despite them not being any cleaner. She bought him those pants. Now they’ll have to burn them.

The motel room light flickers. There is the quiet, nauseating sound of dripping.

Five seems surprised, looking up, that Allison is still there, but – as _if_ she could possibly move. Her body feels encased in stone, waves of disgust locking her limbs in place.

“ _Go_ , already,” he says, slightly out of breath. He sounds for all the world like a petulant teenager; one who just beat a fully grown man to death without a shred of remorse. “What are you waiting for?”

Allison swallows down the bile in her throat and nods, trying to clear her thoughts, and tear her eyes away from the scene. _Right – right._ They need to go. And warn the others.

But she can’t move. She watches a thin line of blood slide down the wall into the carpet. The _smell_ is –

From outside, Klaus calls in a stage-whisper, “ _Allison?_ _Hello?_ ” And it snaps her from her trance.

Allison fumbles with the suitcase and ends up just tossing it out the window blindly, hoping it doesn’t land on him. She can feel Five’s eyes on the back of her neck. She wishes, embarrassingly, that she’d just run when he told her to.

“You shouldn’t have watched,” he says with a sigh, as if reading her mind. “I did warn you.” He sounds just like he did when they were children. _I told you so._

“I’m fine,” she snaps, lying to him as much as herself. “You did what you had to. It was – necessary.” The word makes her feel ill. “He was going to kill us.”

“Yes,” Five says, still looking at her. His face is dashed with dark flecks of blood, and he doesn’t seem to care. “He was.”

“So it’s fine,” Allison says stiffly.

Five shifts his weight, tilting his head thoughtfully. “It is for us. But they’re going to find him, aren’t they? His siblings. I bet they’ll miss him.” He watches for her reaction closely. “I can understand why you would feel conflicted about that.”

He doesn’t sound like a person. He sounds like a machine, reciting a script. Allison thinks, unexpectedly, that he’s repeating something Vanya told him word for word, believing that it will make Allison feel better about the shitty, shitty world they’re stuck in. And Allison understands his wording very clearly, because if there’s one thing Allison is an expert on, it is the wording of a phrase to mean exactly what you intend it to.

_I don’t feel conflicted,_ Five is saying. Because he did it for them. He did it for _her._ And that, for Five, removes all questions of morality from any equation.

And wouldn’t she do the same? _Hasn’t_ she? Allison knows herself, and she understands that her issue is not with Five killing that man. She understands it. So why, then, does she feel like this? Maybe it was the brutality of it – the juxtaposition of Five’s young face with the act of extreme violence she just witnessed. Maybe that’s the mother inside of her.

_But you’re not a mother anymore, are you?_

“I’m not conflicted,” Allison answers, and really, it’s true. “You know, if you ever need to – talk, or…”

She misses Claire so much that her heart squeezes. Five watches her, his features arranged into a mask of cool detachment – or, maybe, he really is coolly detached, and is waiting for her to shut up and leave. She doesn’t think she knows this man well enough yet to tell. In the room next to them, someone on a TV laughs sharply. _What did Five say again?_

Allison pictures coming home and finding _her_ Number One a headless body mashed into a motel room carpet.

“All right,” Five says, unaffected. “Good. Can we get a move on?”

Time to pretend. Allison can do that. “Yeah, but it’s my turn for a warning.” She clears her throat, doesn’t look at the corpse of Marcus still oozing in the doorway. “I think I might be sick.” Maybe. She hasn’t exactly had much of an appetite lately.

“Well, you’ll have to do it on the way,” Five says, sounding old and impatient. “We need to go.”

She goes to the ledge. Klaus, below, waves at her like _what the hell is going on up there?_ She chews her lip, looks back at her littlest, elder brother. “You think they’re coming?”

Five glances at what used to be Marcus, then back at her. “I _think_ that I don’t want to wait here and find out.”

_Will they mourn? Will they come looking for vengeance? Or, now having seen what happens to people who try and threaten Number Five, will they keep their distance?_

She nods again, feeling a bit overwhelmed, and then Five’s eyes flick down to the blood in his fingernails and the creases of his knuckles, and for a second, he does look conflicted. Human. But it passes, and he says, “Allison, when you call the others—”

She waits, but he doesn’t finish, face hidden in shadow. If he expresses an emotion, she doesn’t know what she’ll do, but she’s ready. Allison clears her throat. “Yes?”

Five drops his hands. “Tell them you didn’t look.”

And then, in a blink, he’s gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Ew! How fun. I love Allison and Five I hope we get to see more of them together
> 
> Um, at the time I'm writing this, we don't know the Sparrow Academy's powers, but I noticed in one of the s3 bts photos of that bus stop that one of them wears like, a visor? like cyclops from x-men? so. I gave him that power. Original. not like he gets to use it, lmao
> 
> Anyone catch the Baby Driver reference...? It's my favourite movie
> 
> Leave a comment expressing your revulsion or your adoration, whichever. And I’ll see you, as always, tomorrow!!


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